The Age of Discovery

[NiteFox]

Are you trying to say that the Chinese boats were Junk ? ;)

Oh the pain, the pain.

Make it stop, please :)

[TaMeOlta]

:lol: Sorry , that was a joke ;) ! Nitefox caught it ;)

[Assur]

Angel,Apr 30 2004, 09:36 AM]

edit - Update!
I wanted to compare the two expansions - Portugese and Spanish - the former being a more "benign" than the latter. Portugese establishment of trading companies vs Spanish conquest and colonisation, etc. (I'm not going to paint the picture that black and white, the Portugese *did* in fact establish colonies of their own and conduct slave trade, it's just that the sources I've read so far leads me to believe that the Spanish in a stronger degree than the Portugese sought to take control over the areas they explored rather than cooperating with the people who lived there.

In one of the books I'm using it says that Columbus originally intended to do trade with the natives in the Americas, but because communications failed, he turned to conquest instead.

Hi

The reason the Portugese didn't turn to conquest in the Spanish way was that the Asian states were much to powerful for them to conquer, unlike the Aztecs and Inkas the Asians had guns. Where the Portugese managed to conquer they were everybit as brutal as the Spanish!

Check out:

Hall, Richard: Empires of the Monsoon. The Indian Ocean and its Invaders

The Spanish didn't go east, they went west :D , they reached the Philippines from their colony in Mexico.

Columbus thought he would reach Asia where trade would have been possible, since he only found a few low-level groups he decided to grab the gold they had so that the voyage wouldn't be a total loss.

[[wcip]Angel]

Yeah, but Portugal could have expanded their sphere of influence on their way to Asia, in Africa. I have no way of knowing this except for sheer logic, but something tells me the African people didn't have guns :) (And that's not a racist remark, I'm just piggy-backing off of Diamond's preface. :) )

[--Pete]

Hi,

But Portugal wasn't looking for lands to conquer, they were looking to get rich off the spice trade. Besides, Africa was a tough nut to crack. Few harbors and those were poor. Much of the continent is either desert (or at least semi-desert grassland) or jungle. The effort just wasn't worth the potential payback -- not compared to a spice trade that would make the nation that controlled it the richest nation in Europe.

That the world was a sphere was known to most educated people from antiquity on. A number of Greeks used shadows and trigonometry to calculate the Earth's circumference. Estimates ranged from 19,000 miles to about 24,000 miles. The distance from Europe to Asia overland was pretty well known. Subtract that distance from the circumference and one gets the range a ship sailing West would have to have to make the trip.

The Portuguese had done their homework. They knew that the 24,000 figure was about right and that no existing ship could make the Western voyage (about the sum of crossing the Atlantic and Pacific). That's why they were trying the South then East path. The English also had a pretty good idea, and Columbus never even got an interview. The Spanish were much more backwards. They bought in to Columbus' 19,000 mile circumference and the notion that a ship *could* make the voyage. They were flush with the spoils from driving the Muslims and Jews out of Spain (and confiscating their possessions). So they made a cheap investment. Ignorance, wrongheadedness, dumb luck, and the world was "changed".

Would things have been different if the American natives had been more advanced or better armed? Ask the natives of India, of China.

After all, a Catholic, European, Pope divided the world between Spain and Portugal and effectively told them to grab as much as they wanted. Since the inhabitants were not Catholic Europeans, they were nothing.

--Pete

[Assur]

Angel,Apr 30 2004, 11:00 PM]Yeah, but Portugal could have expanded their sphere of influence on their way to Asia, in Africa.

Hi

You are right on in that regard, but the Portugese at first only grabbed coastal sites in Africa, to safeguard their way to the East, except for Mombasa!

Angola and Mozambique were only later developed as colonies when they lost their Asian/sea-dominated empire!

The Spanish were also looking at a way of bypassing Africa to reach the Indies, but the Portugese stopped them in a brutal, and also unknown war, in the late 15teeth century, if you don't want to take prisoners in a naval battle nobody is going to stop you.

[Assur]

Hi

Oops sorry, I should have posted both answers in one posting.

The Portugese were looking for spices and souls, also they still believed in the myth of Prester John, so they were hoping that they could link up with a Christian monarch who was resisting the Moslem hordes :o

They assisted the Ethiopian Empire in several of their wars with Muslim invaders, it seems that they had a real influence in that sector.

Getting back to the original Chinese thread, most of it has been mentioned before. The central bueraucracy, and the normal cultural norms, viewed everything outside the Celestial Kingdom as inferior! If the Chinese lost occasionally to the barbs it was regarded as a temporary misfortune, to be explained by the lacking virtue of the emporer who was at power at that time.

[[wcip]Angel]

I'm nearing the end of my essay. I just have 1 more aspect of the expansion I need to deal with before I can write my conclusion, and that's the effect - the consequences - of the Portugese and Spanish expansion. I haven't read all that much about it, and I thought I'd pick your brains (yet again) for some ideas I can use.

I will divide this subject into four:

1. Consequences in Portugal
2. Consequences in Africa where Portugal founded trading companies
3. Consequences in Spain
4. Consequences in America where Spain conquered land.

(In #1 and #3 I will also touch on the effect on rest of Europe. E.g the gold the Spanish brought home was spread across north-western Europe, and what this did to those countries.)

I need to do all this in no more than 500 words. I must be be very concise.

[--Pete]

Hi,

4. Consequences in America where Spain conquered land.

Because of the Line of Demarcation, Portugal colonized what is now Brazil. Thus, the Brazilian language is (or "is based on" according to some people) Portuguese.

As for the rest, good luck.

--Pete

[[wcip]Angel]

I don't mean to drag this thread on forever. I just wanted to tell you all that I finished my essay today. There's a 4000 word limit (as I think I already mentioned). However, we may exceed that limit by 10% before our grades are affected bringing the actual limit up to 4400 words. I managed to land on 4399 :)

I just wanted to thank everyone for your help with ideas about what to include and comments on what literature to use. I suppose I could have done the essay without you, but nowhere as well. Thanks a bunch! I don't want to jinx this, but I think this essay might do quite well.

[Sailboat]

Well, good luck.

I must say I'm a bit startled at the scope of this project. I hadn't checked back and so I missed all the Spain and Portugal stuff -- was that really in the same essay? It seems like 4400 words is very little space to deal with the Chinese expansion and then also contrast the Spanish and Portuguese empires and their effects on Europe and on European relations with Native Americans. That's an awesome amount of ground to cover in one essay.

No offense intended, it reminds me of an old joke about a test that had intimidatingly hard questions on it. The whole gag is here, but the part that your essay assignment reminded me of is the history subsection:

History: Describe the history of the Papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Be brief, concise and specific.

Sailboat

[[wcip]Angel]

I didn't have to include China, Portugal and Spain in my essay.

My assignment was

"The European expansion during 1400-1500 and the contact with other continents."

This is the topic. We have to make up our own question. The question or "name" of my essay was "Reasons for and consequences of the European expansion." I touched on China slightly and used its lack of expansion to explain why Europe *did* in fact. Even though both parties had the chance to expand, one did and one didn't. To explain why one did, I explain why the other didn't and then compare those reasons to the one who did.

(The China-thing was just one of the reasons I used to describe why Europe took to the seas.)

[Assur]

Hi

I hope the report gets you a good grade, after all the support :D

Where are you studying? Oslo? Bergen? College? University?

good karma

[[wcip]Angel]

I too hope for a good grade. An "A" stands for "Acceptable", "B" for "borderline" and "C" for "Choke the life out of me already, will you?"

I study at the Stavanger university college.

[[wcip]Angel]

Sorry to bring this thread up from the dead, but I just wanted to inform you, if anyone cares, that I got an A on my paper.

Thanks a lot for your input. I really couldn't have achieved this grade without your help!